Star I once met releases new album. And it’s pretty good.
This week, I have mostly been listening to Ed Harcourt’s new album, Strangers.
Apologies if I’ve told you this before, but I saw Ed Harcourt playing with his first band, Snug, about 8 years ago at the Water Rats. They were supporting Kenickie (Lauren Laverne, etc), who I was going to ask to write a diary for an online magazine we were running at the time. I was so impressed with Snug (a sort of public school version of Green Day), I asked them to write a diary instead. ‘Our lives as a struggling popstar’, that sort of thing. He wrote it, and it was pretty good really. Especially given the fact he was about 17 at the time.
The online mag folded. So did Snug. Ed Harcourt emerged as a solo star - although even after I’d seen him live, I never worked out he was the same teenager who’d written the diary for us. It was only a piece in the Guardian a year after his first album came out, that they mentioned Snug and I twigged.
Is there a point to this story? No, not really. I found myself standing next to him at a bar a while ago, reminded him of the diary - which he remembered (’Ah yes, Guardian bloke’), and I said it was good to see he was doing so well. And we went our separate ways. I sense you’re not particularly impressed, but at least it’s true.
And the album? I love the fact that - despite the fact he’s at heart a piano-man/ crooner - he’s anything but easy listening. Which means that after I’ve had it on repeat in the office for a day, I know I like it, but it’s just going to take a while to find out whether I love it.
Should you buy it? Of course. Hey, he’s a close personal friend of mine, what else could I say?